Tell No Lies (2 page)

 

Pam Baker was officially a murder victim.

Her body lay twisted beside an open grave while the medical examiner wrapped up the initial exam. Later, when all the evidence had been collected, they would bag her and haul her in.

Only recently had the Lowcountry recovered from an epidemic of terror that had propelled Charleston out of the age of innocence it had stubbornly clung to. The possibility of a copycat killer was unthinkable.

Detective Jack Shaw was beginning to see spots before his eyes from the insistent flash of the assistant’s camera. Photos of the body, in and out of the grave, the hands, the mouth, the church, the perimeter, and anyone milling about the scene—thankfully, at 2
A.M
. there weren’t many onlookers. Realizing what they were facing, they’d purposely kept silent on the police band.

He stared down at the bagged hands. Samples from beneath her nails would be taken later in the lab. The tape over the girl’s mouth was undisturbed, though he had a hunch he knew exactly what they would find once they removed it—or more importantly, what they wouldn’t find. If the MO was the same, the tongue would be gone and the inside of her mouth would be painted blue. The problem was . . . he could see this one didn’t exactly follow the previous patterns, and there was a growing sense of unease in the pit of his stomach while he waited for an estimated time of death.

“Dual lividity . . . present.”

Which meant that the body had been moved since death. The perp had probably killed her somewhere else and then dumped her here. The obvious place to look would be inside the abandoned church, but the place was clean as far as he could tell. The only discernible footprints they’d found along the dirty wood floor were those belonging to kids. A few oily black rags had been hanging inside, but they appeared to be covered by a coating of wax or grime. Still, the lab would test them thoroughly.

“No presence of larvae—ants, check, flies check. Exposure to elements . . . brief.” The examiner’s assistant stood behind her, scribbling down every word uttered onto a notepad. Somehow, the toneless oration seemed an insult to a girl who, only weeks before, had been full of life. Jack had met her only once, but he’d talked to her on several occasions whenever he’d called the
Tribune
’s offices. Pamela Baker had disappeared while investigating the Secessionville murders for the newspaper. He sighed. She was a wannabe reporter who never got to finish her first case.

“Rigor mortis . . . on the decline. Hand me the thermometer.”

The assistant scrambled to produce the desired instrument. After a moment, the examiner continued, “Body temp matches environmental temp, currently eighty-seven degrees. Initial guess, time of death, judging by the lack of blood decomposition, somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-six hours.”

Although he was expecting it, Jack felt bile rise in his throat at the announcement. The girl’s skin was pale, bloodless, no marbling yet, very little bloating. Her eyes were sightless, covered with a thin film, but you could still see the dark spidery web of broken vessels in the bulging whites of her eyes. Inserting a thermometer into her liver had been easy since, unlike the other victims, this one had been sliced from her pelvic cavity up past her navel.

Maybe the killer was evolving?

Whatever the case, the team would leave no stone unturned tonight, because if the medical examiner was correct—and she had seen more than enough dead bodies to know—Pamela Baker had only been a corpse for less than thirty-six hours while suspected murderer Ian Patterson had been sitting in a jail cell for more than three weeks. There was a dead girl lying near an open grave in an abandoned graveyard and a missing kid—a twelve-year-old boy—and it was entirely possible they had the wrong man behind bars.

He stared down at the body, unblinking.

From the beginning, Patterson had insisted on his innocence. Only now it seemed the man might be telling the truth. But if Patterson didn’t kill Pamela Baker . . . who did? That was what Jack had to figure out before the case against Patterson collapsed.

Talk about shitty Mondays. He glanced at his watch. It was 2:20
A.M
. He wondered how Rose Simmons was doing. The kid’s grandma had been rushed to the emergency room after the news of his disappearance—heart attack. He knew the old lady personally and hoped she would make it.

The medical examiner gave him a glance over her shoulder. “Well, Jack,” she said. “It’s official. This makes number three.
Now
you’ve got yourself a serial case.”

With the discovery of the first body, a college student, Jack’s gut had told him they were dealing with a serial killer, and he had nearly lost his job trying to get the higher-ups to listen. Now it was the last thing he wanted to hear. “You sure?”

She peeled off her gloves as she faced him, grimacing. “As sure as I am that Baker is dead.”

They both turned to look at the body that had been hauled out of the grave. Sliced from pelvis to breastbone with the blade of a sharp instrument, she lay sprawled under the trees, her body tinted blue-green under the moonlight that sliced through the canopy of green. Her hands were posed prayerfully and taped together. Her mouth also was taped shut, her eyes bulging and sightless.

“Obviously, we’ll want to be certain of her identity before we release the news,” she added. “I’ll be able to tell you for sure once we get her into the lab.”

After a month of looking at her picture day in and day out, Jack didn’t need a lab report to know who it was. Unfortunately, Baker’s time had run out.

Cody’s clock was ticking now, and if Ian Patterson wasn’t guilty, then they didn’t have a clue where to begin. “Thanks,” he said, and walked away.

 

 

Augusta pressed her eyes shut, trying to block out the images taunting her.

After two weeks, a good night’s sleep still eluded her. She took pride in the fact that she didn’t have any hang-ups, and wasn’t the type to sleep around, but something about Ian Patterson had made her throw all caution to the wind—not that she could add that particular virtue to her list, mind you. She was stubborn, impetuous and nonconforming, but caution was not really a strong point. This time she might have really screwed up.

The night they’d discovered Kelly Banks’s body, she had, in fact, been with Ian at the Windjammer, a beachside bar on the Isle of Palms. By now she had fully expected to be brought in for questioning, but so far Ian had remained silent about their time together. Why, she couldn’t fathom, but she guessed everything would come out once they proceeded with a trial.

She could see the papers now:
Aldridge Heir Steps Forward with Alibi for Murder.

Her sister Caroline was going to flip.

As publisher of the
Tribune,
Caroline would take heat over it and Channel 11 would seize the opportunity to excoriate her.

But Augusta had gone over it again and again in her head.

Alibi or not, it wasn’t as though Ian couldn’t have committed that particular murder. Still, he hadn’t seemed like a killer. Augusta had been so certain he was being persecuted by her sister and by the media that she had jumped to his defense.

“You’re pushing all my buttons,” he’d warned with that slow smile and Southern drawl that somehow managed to confuse her. “You don’t want to go there.”

“You’re not a priest any longer,” she’d countered, pressing the cold, damp bottle of beer to her lips. She could almost taste the sweat from his body as she stared at him across the table and crossed her legs, gasping softly at the physical sensations that rushed through her.

“No,” he said, his expression dark.

A warning maybe?
Augusta ignored it.

“I’m not.”

She was baiting him. “So then you’ve sworn off women?”

His pale blue eyes glinted like ice in the dim light of the bar, and the single word made Augusta’s heart jump a little. “Only those related to the ones hell-bent on putting me behind bars.”

He was talking about her sister, of course. Caroline had worked tirelessly to keep Ian’s sins in the public eye. She’d dug up every last offense Ian had ever been accused of and had published it without mercy, putting questions out there for everyone, including the police, to consider. Thanks to Caroline, they all knew he’d had sex for the first time at the age of eleven and spent a summer in juvy.

Augusta didn’t believe any of those stories were relevant—not a single one—especially since they had been tainted by her sister’s efforts to pull their family’s legacy—an ailing newspaper—out of the gutter. Augusta truly believed Ian was the victim of a witch hunt, not a criminal, and the only danger she faced seemed quite carnal in nature.

Her gaze never left his eyes. They were like deep, clear blue pools beckoning her into his soul. Somewhere in those depths she saw his vulnerability, and it spoke to her in a seductive whisper. “Guilt by association?”

He shrugged noncommittally. Augusta took a long pull of her beer, tearing her gaze away from his face with some effort, concealing the shudder of her breath behind a long exhale.

Every nerve in her body was taut and alive.

He arched a dark blond brow. “Why are you here, Augusta?”

Despite the fact that the Windjammer was full of sweating bodies and buzzing with chatter, all Augusta could hear was the sound of his voice and her own heartbeat ticking at her temples. Her palms felt sweaty, and she wrapped the bottle in her left hand and brushed the cool dampness of it with her right, wondering if the taste of him was as intoxicating as the brew in her hand. She shrugged. “Maybe I’m here because I don’t believe you’re guilty?”

The arch of his brow deepened. “Are you asking . . . or telling?”

Augusta was much more adamant this time. “No, I
don’t
believe you’re guilty!”

He sat back and assessed her a moment. “That would make you the only person in this city who doesn’t,” he suggested.

Augusta eyed the girl on stage, inclining her head. She smiled knowingly. “Apparently, not the only one.”

In her early twenties, the dark-haired girl was obviously smitten with Ian. Absently strumming her guitar, she hadn’t taken her eyes off them all night, but Ian didn’t seem to notice. His attention was focused on Augusta, and she knew he was feeling exactly the way she was feeling at the moment. The air between them felt as tightly wound as the strings of his “girlfriend’s” guitar. Augusta tipped her chin toward the girl on stage. “She believes in you enough to give you an alibi.”

“She told the truth,” he said. “I was here that night, watching her play—right here at this table, in fact—waiting for her brother to join me.” He tapped the table.

“So I hear.” Augusta tilted her head, eyeing him coyly, and then she asked, “She your girlfriend?”

Her heart leapt a little over the way he emphasized the single word, making it clear there was nothing more between them.

“With benefits?”

“Without.”

Augusta tilted him another questioning look. “Her choice or yours?”

He lifted a brow. “Does it really matter, Augusta?”

Augusta shrugged, feigning indifference though she felt anything but.

“Alright . . . so you don’t believe I’m guilty,” he conceded. “But why are you
really
here, Miz Aldridge?”

Augusta blinked at him. The truth was that she didn’t know.

She sat forward in her chair, uncertain how to answer. “I . . . I want to help . . . if I can,” she said and met his gaze directly, willing him to see her sincerity. “I suppose I feel guilty about the way my sister is harassing you.”

He brought his glass of water to his lips. No beer—straight up H2O. “I’m a big boy,” he said. “I can take care of myself. What you need to worry about,” he added darkly, “is your sister . . . and yourself. You’re in over your head,” he told her.

Augusta’s face flushed. It was the truth. Whether or not he was innocent or guilty, she was a danger to herself right now. She suddenly felt crowded and stifled and stood abruptly, not really certain if she meant to go.

He peered up at her with a look of concern. “You alright?”

“Yeah. I just need some air.”

That moment sealed her fate.

They shared a long look, one that said nothing and everything at once.

“I’ll walk with you,” he offered. “We could both use a little breathing room.”

Augusta set her beer down on the table, glad that she hadn’t ordered a second, pretending to herself that she still had her wits about her and her sensibilities intact.

It was the second lie she’d told herself tonight. The first was that she didn’t know why she was here, because deep down, she knew exactly what she was doing.

He followed her out back, where, even in the thick heat of summer, there was a serious crowd—some spillover from the performance inside, others who simply wanted an excuse to drink a bottled beer out on the beach and still others whose youths had been spent loitering around the volleyball nets that were strung outside the Windjammer and who couldn’t see their way through a summer without reliving a moment from their past. Although the façade had changed somewhat, the Windjammer was an Isle of Palms institution. She made her way toward the beach, wholly aware of the man who silently followed. She could barely hear his footfalls along the boardwalk.

Augusta tried to clear her head.

What made her so certain Ian wasn’t the killer everyone was trying to make him out to be? And why was she leading him onto a dark beach on a nearly moonless night? Her sisters would be out of their minds with worry if they had an inkling where she was and whom she was with. “You don’t have to come with me,” she offered belatedly, though she hoped he wouldn’t stop.